Today was my first day of the start of my new racing season. It was not supposed to but once I did an hour easy on my spinning bike and hit the road for an EZ 15 miler, I knew I was focused and ready to start building a "new base" so I can go faster next year.

The focus is to run slow until mid February and build up the miles and aerobic endurance. Yes I will still be doing 2 speed sessions a week, but everything else be slow and long. Tall

Tall, good luck with this, but it sounds as if you think normal training would include more than two speed sessions per week. What did you used to do, versus what do you plan to do? Two quality speed sessions per week ought to be ample. What key changes do you plan to make to your training going forward, other than the important core work you mentioned? Good luck with it by the way. It is always fun to see you publish your goals, then go out and destroy them. Spareribs

Well......I take a day off and the thread goes ummm.........in a direction we don't want. Anyway, I loved the concern of everyone to get things back to "normal".

I WILL agree with Holly that in a fight, I want Sally on my side......yikes, you have spirit lady (and I say that with admiration).

Tet......is 46,000 the number of steps on average taken in a marathon? I wondered that and had counted for the first 19 miles of my marathon and then lost count. At that stage I figured I wouldn't go back to the start just to get the count right.

6 miles put in this morning on the hotel treadmill. It is a 2 PM game time and "get away day".

10 miles in 1:30 with three great friends at 8AM when it was 20F--now 45F here- in Western, MA. The light was gorgeous and while we were a bit frosty at the start, we warmed up immediately thanks to the motion and the friendship most of all. My legs felt great even after yesterday's race and this run pushed me over 40 for the week.

PDR-the post about your Dad inspired me to play my father's favorite music as a way to pay tribute to him. Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis all afternoon for me. I know he is groovin' somewhere out there right now--one cool Cat. I hope you have a wonderul afternoon with him.

{{{{ Holly }}}} The best way to deal with a venomous insect is to ignore it.

On the other hand, I've never really forgiven tselbs for failing to acknowledge the striders I did on Aug. 5, 2006.

Ribs, thanks for your kind words the other day. You bet I'm frustrated that this injury has dragged on so long, but we've had so many great examples of people who have patiently gone through rehab and returned better than ever -- perchcreek, PDR, rbbmoose, and others -- that complaining about it just seems petty. I'm grateful for every mile I can run right now, and hope to be back to normal training by January. Plenty of time to get ready for you to join us at the Crim.

I wanted to swim today, but got to the Y and realized I'd forgotten my goggles. So, 60 min on the elliptical, with 5x5:00 at tempo effort, HR asymptoting to the mid-160s, with 2:00 rests in between. 100 situps, 3x30s side planks on each side, and stretching.

Pink Door did not disappoint as I met so many Boomers that I had hitherto known only from their posts, except the lovely Econo whom I met in September. I feel very honoured to be a part of such a wonderful group of people, and am humbled to be even in the presence of someone running their 100th marathon today. GO TET! (I think I forgot to give you a hug...raincheck.)

Like Ribs, I've recently been thinking about DaveinAA and how gracefully he seems to be handling his significant time off from running. What a swimmer he has become! Wow!

Others on this board have been equally as inspirational in dealing with their injuries. I only hope I could do half as well but I'd probably turn into a total whiner. MrChoover has been struggling with some ITBS and I am getting a bit of a taste of this injury stuff first hand through his eyes.

Any how, I ran 3.1 slow miles looking for a glove I dropped yesterday. Pretty pointless trying to find a white glove in the snow.